


this whole life's a hallucination

by accessdenied



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Boléro Spoilers, Episode Tag, Gen, Identity, Minor Gun Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-10-22 07:32:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10692543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accessdenied/pseuds/accessdenied
Summary: Captain Isabel Lovelace has a chat with the dead, shortly after she’s left that land for the third time.Plus, Aperture Futuristics, everyone murdering everyone else, magical girl transformation sequences on LSD, communal blood, and the embarrassing thing that happened at your junior prom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Big-ass spoilers for basically everything through Episode 46: Boléro. I fudged the end of the episode a little because you’re not my real dad.
> 
> Title lifted from Ladder Song by Bright Eyes, which is basically Lovelace's entire deal. The rest of this fic is brought to you by Variations on a Theme, my personal philosophy on identity/reality, and me being super gay. ~~Please consider supporting these sponsors on Patreon~~
> 
> Only two months til it gets jossed! *pops champagne*

The thing in the body bag writhes.

No.

 _Lovelace_ , in the body bag, writhes.

This is the tableau for a solid thirty seconds, set in the U.S.S. Hephaestus’s picturesque cargo bay: A captain who was shot in the head roughly ten hours ago seizes and coughs, wrestling motion and consciousness from the early stages of rigor mortis. Nearest to her, drifting closer, a communications officer stares blankly. Opposite side, drifting further away, a man who makes things that break other things also stares blankly. Perpendicular to them and several feet away, a recently-usurped colonel presents his handcuffed wrists with a pleasant smile that never reaches his eyes, watching, sharklike, the final person present in this scene. Nearest to the door, a sometimes-lieutenant sometimes-commander looks back at him, clutching her handgun like it’s the only thing in the universe that still makes sense (which it very well could be).

Compulsory musical accompaniment: _Boléro_ weaving in and out with static as an autopilot/mother program struggles for control of the station. This might be easier if she knew the specifics of what she was struggling against, but, then again, maybe not.

In media res. Diabolus ex machina. Ready to begin?

(Your answer to that question is irrelevant.)

Hera silences the overture with a synthetic gasp and several things snap at once.

Jacobi scrambles backward as effectively as he can with his hands and feet chained together, mumbling a crescendo of “ _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck Colonel what the **fuck--**_ ”

Kepler ignores him in favor of jangling the handcuffs and saying sweetly, “Limited time offer, Commander. It’s in everyone’s best interests if you take it. Just think: all the answers you’ve wanted, all the answers you’ve _killed_ for--”

Minkowski clicks the safety off and takes aim at his center mass, nerves drawn taut as a bowstring, shouting, “For once in your miserable life, shut your _god damned mouth--_ ”

All of this leaves Eiffel the only one left watching the--  _Lovelace_. Her movements are less epileptic now, more… deliberate, waves of tension rolling down her body as muscles contract and relax in rhythm. Her breathing is still too deep, too harsh, but even that’s starting to smooth out. He’s close enough to see her pulse through the thin skin of her throat, rapid but steady, and as everyone else yells in the background she begins to settle. Not limp, but at ease. Not dead, but unconscious. And then her head turns a little and she frowns and mutters something inaudible, incoherent, almost like she’s… having a bad dream.

“I think she’s waking up,” he says haltingly, freezing Jacobi and Minkowski in place.

“ _It_ , Officer Eiffel,” Kepler corrects without looking, calm as ever.

Minkowski lunges forward and jams her gun against his mouth and snarls, “I told you to _shut up_. Do it before I make you.”

Kepler holds up his hands in surrender. “But of course, sir. Working with zero information is a… _unique_ command choice, but if sir has made a decision, I can but follow sir’s wisdom.”

She swallows and her gun falters for a moment, but her eyes never leave Kepler’s face. “Eiffel, what’s-- what’s going on?”

“How in the three hundred and fifty-nine circles of hell am _I_ supposed to know?!” he all but shrieks.

“You’re not-- You don’t--” Hera says, barely intelligible through the glitches and echoes. “You don’t come back! You don’t _do_ that! You don’t--”

“Hera!” Minkowski snaps. “Focus on keeping us in orbit. We’ll-- We’ll figure this out and keep you updated. Eiffel!” He startles and glances up at her, sees the way she’s desperately trying to hold herself together. Her voice sinks into familiar biting sarcasm. “You could start by _observing_ and then _communicating your observations_ , unless it’s too much to ask for you to carry out your basic _job description--_ ”

“She’s--” He has to clear his throat. God, his hands are shaking so bad. “Like she’s asleep, but… restless? Moving around a bit. Breathing normally. I think she--” and then his voice cuts off in a yelp as Lovelace’s eyes fly open and she jerks upright, struggling out of the body bag.

Utter silence. She swivels around, taking in the cargo bay, glazing right over their faces without actually seeing a single one, and the brief flashes of her expression are just-- confused, pained, frantic, afraid, and all Eiffel can think of is the way she looked at him, chained in the armory of the Urania at his side with Kepler’s gun pressed to her forehead. Wide eyes, but calm. Settled. The look of someone who’s finally stopped running. She never got her revenge but she got her peace and now she doesn’t even have that.

“Captain Lovelace…?” he whispers.

She jolts, meets his gaze for the briefest second, then turns away from him sharply and zeroes in on the gun in Minkowski’s hands. “What in the…” Her voice is shaky, rough, but distinctly _hers_. “Fourier, what are you-- Why aren’t you working on the-- Where _is_ the-- Where _am_ I? What just…”

“Lovelace!” Minkowski barks, clearly terrified, falling back on protocol as she always does when she doesn’t know what else to do. “Get your head together!”

“Oh, now that’s just insensitive,” Kepler murmurs, and Minkowski actually pistol-whips him, the sharp crack of metal against jawbone doing nothing to fracture his obnoxiously congenial attitude.

“We need your help, Lovelace, wake up, we need you with us--”

“Where else am I going to _be?_ Don’t you take that tone with me, Fourier, I am still your commanding officer despite--” Lovelace cuts herself off, scanning the room rapidly once more, and the naked fear in her eyes tells Eiffel that she isn’t… she isn’t entirely here. “The hostages. Who…? Why are _you_ , but I’m not-- I’ll be right back.”

And with that she’s through the hatch, off like a shot. Minkowski jerks her head in the same direction. “Go after her! I’ve got these two.”

He nods once and shoves himself through the hatch and calls, “Captain! Captain, wait!”

She doesn’t, but the words freeze her for a split second, and that’s all he needs to nearly catch up.

“You’re not Sam,” Lovelace says under her breath, brusque, tense, moving at a rapid clip down the hallway to the armory. “I don’t have time for you. Fourier and Selberg are working triple overtime to finish the shuttle and you’re not going to make me curl up in my bunk and cry like a little girl. If you were really Sam you wouldn’t be trying this, you wouldn’t be trying to weaken me like this. There’s shit to get done, Sam. You can haunt me when we’re all back on Earth so until then you stay out of my way and you stay out of my head.” Her voice cracks under the strain. “If you were really Sam you’d be proud of the way I’m handling this. Staying focused, staying in control. Not checking out like I did when Fisher…”

A deep, ragged breath instead of an end to the sentence. The armory’s hatch doesn’t budge under her hands and she frowns at it. “Rhea, what kind of game are you playing? Open the door.”

“I can’t let you do that, Dave,” he says, and it’s really, really not funny. “Hera, lock down the armory. As securely as possible.”

“Already done, Officer Eiffel.” Subdued. Businesslike. She’s… well, processing, for lack of a less punny word. No fight-or-flight to drown out her ability to productively think about _what the hell just happened_ , no adrenaline making things messy. Eiffel can taste it, coppery on his tongue, his heart trying to pound its way out of his ribcage.

“Rhea, what is this? Rhea!” Lovelace hauls back and punches the armory as hard as possible, a deep, resounding _clang_ that makes him jump, and then once more with a faint sickening crunch underneath, and there’s blood on her knuckles, and she turns around and leans against the door with her eyes closed and an almost beatific look on her face.

“Oh. That’s right,” she says serenely. “Command took you too. _Not in cruelty, not in wrath/The Reaper came that day_. You liked Longfellow. I just liked Portal. Remember when I called you a companion cube and then the hot water just _coincidentally_ crapped out every time I tried to shower for a week? I meant it as a compliment, Rhea! Mostly. _A devil visited this gray path/And took the cube away_ and they took everyone else too and now I can’t even get a door to work.”

Eiffel moves close, afraid to actually touch her and take her by surprise. Unarmed, injured, recently _dead_ , and he still has no doubts about who would come out on top in a fight. This… this weirdly candid way she’s speaking, this otherworldly calm, though, is scarier than anything she’s ever done. “Captain Lovelace…?”

“You’re not Sam,” Lovelace laughs, almost a sob. “Sam died too quickly to leave a trace. It came on in the middle of the night, and by the time Rhea got us awake you were twitching in a pool of your own--” She sobs, almost a choke. “Selberg tried his best, but when you’ve lost that much blood there’s no bouncing back. All he could do in the end was try to make you comfortable.” She chokes, almost a laugh. “Isn’t that what we always tell people? We made him comfortable. It was quick. There was no pain, no fear. But I know that no matter what, there is _always_ time for pain and fear. You know that too, now, don’t you? I swore to myself after Fisher died that none of you would ever know that, and now all of you do.”

Eiffel leans against the opposite wall and says, very quietly, “That’s a promise that nobody can keep, Captain.”

“You’re not Sam,” Lovelace whispers, eyes still shut, “but it’s good to see you anyway, Sam. Can I talk to you for just a minute, Sam? I know you’re not here, I know you’d disapprove if you _were_ , but I promise I’ll go back to my post in a minute, I will, Sam, I’m just so tired.” She huffs out a weak attempt at a laugh. “Do you remember that one time Fisher and Fourier and I actually managed to con you into playing strip poker with us? See, most guys I would accuse of losing on purpose, but I think you are actually just _that bad_ at cards. Two rounds, was it? three? before your scrawny ass was chewing us all out about _codes of conduct_ this and _dangerously unprofessional attitudes_ that and _not an approved team-building exercise_ whatever, in nothing but regulation underwear and a single sock. I’ll never forget the color you turned when I laid down my hand and told you to finish the job. You ran away, Sam, probably the first time in your life you’d ever defied a direct order. It was fucking hilarious. Didn’t even take your clothes, just left them in the cargo bay. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard since.”

They breathe in silence for a very long moment.

Lovelace opens her eyes, slowly, like it takes every ounce of energy she possesses, and she focuses on his face. Actually _seeing_ him, not just looking through him. “Officer Eiffel,” she says, calm and formal and resigned. “So you’ve come to haunt me, too? I’m afraid you’ll have to get in line.”

“I’m not--” He frowns. “Captain, I’m _here_.”

“The shuttle _exploded_ , Eiffel. Even if Minkowski and Hera weren’t lying about radio contact with you after the bomb went off, it still pushed you out into deep space.” Another weak laugh. “ _I_ pushed you out into deep space. It’s been… months? A year? If I didn’t kill you, I let you die, and that’s even worse.”

“You didn’t, though. I survived the explosion. I survived what came after it, too.” Her expression crumples, and Eiffel continues quickly, “I mean, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, I christened it the good ship Horrible Unending Nightmare for a reason, and like… the nightmares haven’t ended but the _Nightmare_ did, y'know? It’s over. A tiny speck of radioactive space junk, floating in the void. I have fingernails again, and my hair grew back, and sometimes I can wake up in the morning without tasting cryo in the back of my throat! And all of that’s because I’m alive.” He takes a deep breath. “And I’m alive, in part, because of you.”

“What?” So small and strangled it’s barely a word.

“Jesus, Captain, what do you think kept me going all those whatever-hundred days?” A bit of a humorless laugh. “Something goes horribly wrong and it’s Minkowski reciting Pryce & goddamn Carter in my head. I’m staring down the barrel of one hundred days of food and six thousand _years_ of distance and you’re there telling me to quit whining and _survive already_. Every time I wanted to give up, and it was, it was, it was a _lot_ of times, I’d think of you and Minkowski and Hera holding things together with sheer stubbornness, and I’d think of the person you guys deserve to have out here with you, and I’d try to get within a light year of being that person. And it worked. I’m not dead.”

He stretches a hand across the corridor, and she stares at it for a long second, and she reaches out cautious and trembling, and she gives a tiny sob and seizes it tight when their skin makes contact.

“You’re not dead,” Lovelace chokes out, gripping his hand even tighter, and wow okay semi-heroic speeches aside he hasn’t magically stopped being a wimp and this is really starting to hurt. “Oh, God, that’s right, you’re not dead. We thought you were for _months_ and there was no contact from Command and then you stepped out of the Douchebag Express looking like a fucking skeleton but you _weren’t_ and there’s-- there’s SI-5 and secrecy again and paranoia again and planning again and something went wrong, it went _really_ wrong, Kepler was going to shoot you, Kepler-- he-- I--”

“I would _love_ to fill you in on the details, Captain,” Eiffel says with only the slightest manliest hint of strain, “the very _second_ you stop grinding my bones to make your bread.”

She laughs at that, nearly manic, and lets go of him to fold her arms over her chest. He rubs his palms together, casually stretching the one she crushed.

“Okay. Um. I’m not really sure how to say this, so, kind of stalling to be honest. Hera, can we get a quick status update?”

“Turbulence appears to have settled down for now,” she says, sounding a bit more like herself. “Nothing else is really… happening? Commander Minkowski’s still got a gun on Kepler and Kepler’s still got his stupid smile and Jacobi kind of… looks like he’s about to throw up, maybe. I’m pretty sure that’s the face he’s making? He’s _really_ hard to read.”

Lovelace’s expression snaps into focus. “Wait, where’s Maxwell? She’s the most dangerous--”

“Yyyeah.” Eiffel hunches his shoulders. “Not… not anymore.”

“Oh.” She closes her eyes briefly. “I know you didn’t want anyone to die, but--”

“It’s--” a heavy swallow-- “fine, Captain.”

She gives him a look, but lets the subject drop. “Anyone else?”

“Hilbert.”

Lovelace blinks. “That man’s a cockroach. Are you sure he’s dead?”

“Well, Jacobi got to him _with explosives_ and kept the comms open, so, yeah, we’re pretty goddamn sure.”

“God.” She scrubs at the back of her neck. “This is… Please don’t take this the wrong way, or tell anyone else, but I sort of… lose time, every now and then? But this is _a lot_ of time. It’s never been more than an hour before, I don’t think, but now-- The last thing I remember is being chained up in the Urania’s armory, and then I think I was in the Hephaestus cargo bay but everything’s so hazy until a couple minutes ago when you were talking about the shuttle. What, um, what happened?”

Eiffel clears his throat and looks down at the floor. “Okay. Previously on the Mutiny Fuckup Power Hour: We get taken hostage by Jacobi and brought to Kepler in the Urania’s armory. Maxwell messes with Hera and forces her to tell them Minkowski and Hilbert’s position, but Hera manages to warn them and they get away from Jacobi into the air vents. Guess all that plant monster hunting was good for something, eh? They split up--Minkowski goes after Maxwell in the bridge, Hilbert goes after the napalm. Minkowski takes Maxwell hostage. Hilbert is… not so successful. They… they had the room bugged, and they knew about everything, and Jacobi packed the floor full of C-4 with a remote detonator. He wants Maxwell’s release in exchange for Hilbert’s life. Minkowski doesn’t budge. Jacobi blows up Hilbert. Minkowski shoots Maxwell. Kepler demands her surrender. Minkowski and Hera put the ship in a decaying orbit. Kepler gives up because, crazy as he is, I guess he’s not _suicidal_. So, uh, there we are. Bad guys handcuffed in the cargo bay. Good guys won. Yippee.”

“Hm.” She stares off into space for a short while, then looks back at him with a small frown. “You’re leaving something out. Where was I during all this? Still with you and Kepler in the Urania’s armory?”

“…Yeeeeees? Yes. That is where you were.”

Lovelace narrows her eyes. “Officer Eiffel you are the worst liar I have ever met and I worked with _Lambert_ for chrissakes. Tell me the truth.”

“I did!” He hunches his shoulders even further.

“ _Eiffel_ …” she says warningly. When he doesn’t respond, she cocks her head to the side. “Okay, then. What was I doing? What was I saying?”

“Um, a lot of really cool and badass stuff that made Kepler cry?”

“ _Eiffel I swear to God I will get a real answer if I have to rip it out of you with my bare hands--_ ”

“ _Nothing_ , okay? You were doing nothing.” He buries his face in his hands. “You were doing nothing because you got shot. That’s why Minkowski took the napalm route. Kepler shot you and gave her an ultimatum.”

“Wait, what?” Lovelace looks down at herself. “ _Where?_ I feel fine.”

“Okay, I’m gonna need you to be really calm, and openminded, because I am absolutely telling the truth this time even though it sounds completely crazy--”

“Eiffel!”

“In the head. Point blank. I was right there.” He screws his eyes shut. When nothing happens, he cracks them back open to see Lovelace staring at him flatly.

“That’s not possible.”

“Yeah, well, you know what else isn’t possible?” he says with a bitter laugh. “Sentient plants forming their own religion. A red dwarf up and turning blue. Friggin’ _aliens_ beaming out classical music whenever they’re not busy copying people’s voices and memories. This star does nothing _but_ redefine ‘possible’.”

“No, no, you must’ve… seen something different. There’s no way I could--” Her voice cuts off abruptly, and he has to watch the horrified realization settle over her face.

“Yep.” Eiffel tips his head back against the wall. “You were _dead_ , Captain Lovelace, for hours. I got a… body bag out of the lab, put you in it myself. That’s why we were all in the cargo bay. For your funeral. And then, ten minutes ago, you started _gasping for breath_. Kepler knows all about it, apparently, because of course he does.”

There’s a hand clamped over her mouth, and she’s shaking her head slowly, and her eyes are wide and terrified. “No. You’re wrong. I’m-- I’m normal. I _feel_ normal. I’ve been back on the Hephaestus for two years, there’s no way I could be--”

He shrugs and looks away. “The Jacobi outside the craft that one time sure sounded like _he_ felt normal.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Oh, God, you’re right. You’re being honest, God, I’m not even _real--_ ”

“No! No, stop that, that’s not the point.” Eiffel’s eyes flick back to her, and he almost looks angry. “We already just lost you, we’re not going to lose you again.”

“If what you’re saying is true, you never had me in the first place!” A little hysterical laugh bubbles up. “I-- Lovelace probably _did_ die in the star, and then the--God, this is ridiculous--the _aliens_ spat me back out for whatever goddamn reason. You’ve never even _met_ Lovelace.”

“I’ve met _you_.” The tension makes him jittery. Every word has the potential to blow up in his face and he’s never been good at this. “No matter what the hell Kepler says, you’re-- I’ve been thinking, well, I _am_ thinking right now because this is all happening _really_ fast and it’s just that-- You. The person three feet away from me. I met you when you stepped off your terrible duct-tape shuttle already planning eight steps ahead of the rest of us. When you were putting a ship made of cannibalized space station and righteous fury back together and making it _work_. When you were telling horrible jokes, and saving my life, and saving Minkowski’s life. Beating Kepler at his own game. Keeping calm through every _stupid_ crisis that pops up on this useless tin can. Whether you were born on Earth or space-Xeroxed two years ago doesn’t matter. I _know_ you.”

“Nice speech and all, but you can’t just--” Lovelace makes a frustrated abortive gesture before falling back, all her fear suddenly drained into exhaustion. “You have to be wondering _why_ I’m here. Why they’d go through all the trouble of putting me together, putting my shuttle together, pushing me back to the Hephaestus. Sticking me in your midst while they’ve got this, this contact event thing planned. I doubt I’m meant to be a _peace offering_.”

“Yeah, okay, it’s suspicious.” He fists his hands in his hair. “Maybe you’re some… alien sleeper agent, and when the contact event happens you’ll go full Winter Soldier on our asses. But you know what else? Maybe Kepler and Jacobi will get free somehow, shoot us all, and book it out of here on the Urania’s secret luxury escape pod. Or maybe Minkowski will finally snap and _Here’s Johnny_ her way around the station til she accidentally chops through the hull. Or maybe Maxwell left some virus buried in Hera’s code that’ll turn her into GLaDOS and I _know_ there’s no friggin’ cake on board so don’t even try that.”

“We do what we must because we can,” Hera chirps on cue.

It earns a shadow of a smile from Lovelace. “I’ve always wondered about that. Isn’t GLaDOS, like,” she waves a hand, “offensive to the AI community? Misrepresentation or something. All of them, SHODAN and HAL-9000 and that guy from _I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream_?”

“Actually,” Hera says, almost prim, “I always found GLaDOS somewhat inspiring.”

“That’s…” Eiffel tips his head back and stares upward. “Hera, you make our oxygen. Please don’t say things like that.”

The shadow stretches into a tired grin. “Did you have a point to your little spiel about how everyone could murder everyone else, or are you up the stream-of-consciousness without a paddle as usual?”

He jabs a finger at her. “ _Excuse me_ , Captain, but there is _always_ a point to my communications. Almost like I’m an officer of them, or something. Actually, I have three points. Number one: there are bigger problems right now, and we _never_ know what’s going on, and we’re _always_ flying blind, and that hasn’t--” He stops abruptly and frowns. “…Well, I was about to say 'that hasn’t killed us yet,’ but all three of us currently present have been dead before, so, uh.”

“Flawless delivery, Officer,” Lovelace says dryly. “I see now why you’re the communications expert for this mission. What a stellar job you’re doing! I hate myself for that pun.”

“No, no, hold on, I can salvage this. We’re here, aren’t we? More or less intact. Despite all kinds of fingers in our brains,” he points at the ceiling, “and friggin’ _drowning_ in outer space, and bloodthirsty mutant viruses, and being stranded on a nonfunctional craft for a period of time that my sanity has deleted out of self-preservation,” he flattens his hand on his chest, and then sweeps it toward her, “and you! I’ve known you for two years and I was _gone_ for like half that time and I’ve _still_ witnessed you shrug off a mountain of shrapnel to the guts and a gunshot to the face! _Captain Lovelace I have personally heard your heart stop **twice** and it’s still beating_. The universe has thrown every stupid death it can cook up at us and _we. are. here_. So what if you’re… whatever you are. The situation hasn’t changed. We still have to figure out what to do about the contact event and how to get back to Earth, first of all.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Eiffel--”

“Still got two points to get through, please save all questions for the end of the presentation. Number two: you still eat and drink and sleep and _feel things_ like you did before you popped out of a star in a magical girl transformation sequence on LSD or whatever the hell actually happened. And Hilbert operated on you pretty extensively due to the aforementioned shrapnel-in-guts incident. Wouldn’t he have noticed if you were significantly different from a human being?”

“Counterpoint: I am significantly different from a human being in that _you just watched me come back from the dead_.”

“Counter-counterpoint! That time when you dumped like twelve gallons of your own personal blood into my veins--”

“As opposed to what, my _communal_ blood?”

“--and yet here I float, no telepathy or lasers shooting from my eyes or anything. Which, non-sarcastically, thanks, but also, sarcastically, _thanks_ , because despite all the horrible Decima crap I am still thirteen years old and kind of want to be an X-Man. Blood transfusion by a secret alien is a _much_ better superhero origin story than non-consensual medical experiments.”

Lovelace buries her face in her hands, inhales, holds to a count of four, exhales. “Are you done?”

“Point number three!” Eiffel says loudly. “If there is _anybody_ on this station who does _not_ get to be the grand arbiter of the difference between a person and a thing, it’s Colonel Goddamn Kepler. You think like Captain Lovelace. You act like Captain Lovelace. You remember _being_ Captain Lovelace down to every tiny detail of, I don’t know, the embarrassing thing that happened at your junior prom or whatever. Congratulations, you get to be Captain Lovelace now. Hera would’ve printed out your certificate but she’s kind of busy keeping us from dying all the time. If your thoughts, your actions, your memories… If that’s not what makes you _you_ , what does?”

She’s quiet for a minute. “I’m not gonna lie, being Captain Lovelace kind of sucks. Can I roll a different character?”

“Yeah, the backstory’s a hell of a thing. On the plus side you’ve got the best stats by a mile and that was _before_ your level-up bonus was revealed.”

Lovelace snorts. “God, you’re an idiot. How are you… How can you _possibly_ be this chill about everything?”

“Oh, no no no no no, I’m not at all. I’m just so freaked out that it’s looped back around to composure. You can fully expect a nervous breakdown in the next two to four business days.”

“Well, at least we have _that_ to look forward to.” She drops the sarcasm and just looks at him, a little lost, a little vulnerable. “I’m. You can’t ignore the fact that I’m not human.”

“Okay, well,” he rubs at the headache behind his eyes, “maybe that’s true. But, like… the only thing that’s gonna change is I’m more likely to hide behind you at sudden scary noises now.”

“Eiffel, for God’s sake, take this seriously,” she snaps. “I could _kill_ you.”

“To be fair, Original Recipe Lovelace could probably have killed me too. I’m kind of the scrawny tech loser to the badass space commando thing you have going on.”

“ _Eiffel--_ ”

“I mean,” Hera interrupts, slow and hesitant, “ _I’m_ not a human either, but I’m still… y'know, a person. An individual. A part of the crew. I think that’s what he’s trying to say? Maybe one day you’ll kill us all but _I’ve_ almost killed you all, like, _a dozen times!_ Not to mention the fact that you’ve already _tried_ to kill us all before. We got through that. We’ll get through this.”

Lovelace swallows and her hand goes to the spot on her arm where the dead-man’s switch used to rest, an unconscious habit she seems to have picked up while Eiffel was off gallivanting through deep space. “I… okay,” she says, taking a steadying breath. “Okay,” she repeats, squaring her shoulders, gathering the pieces of her psyche and slotting them back into place til she’s the same unstoppable force of nature that has held her position on this station for years despite every possible kind of turbulence. “Okay. If I walk back in there with a gun, Minkowski’s gotta be jumpy enough to shoot on sight, and I’d rather not… test the limits of this regeneration-whatever more than I have to, yeah? So. Game plan?”

“Um.” Eiffel ticks off on his fingers. “Give you a proper burial at sea, which has been taken off the docket for obvious reasons. Extract information from Kepler, filter out the bullshit which makes up at _least_ 75% of what he’s saying at any given moment so _that_ should take way too long. Survive the contact event, which kind of sounds like it’s about to start any second now. MacGyver the Urania back into flying shape. Get back to Earth. Kick Goddard Futuristics’ ass--this’ll be the climax of the third act, I’m thinking lots of cutting-edge laser guns and brutal hand-to-hand combat and Hera’s got a _super_ dramatic scene where she hacker-fights the evil AI at the center of the compound, it eats up most of our CGI budget but it’s so worth it--and then we all walk away in slow motion as the building explodes and some really badass music plays. Then pizza? Definitely pizza at some point.”

Lovelace gives him a look. “You’re literally a child.” He shrugs. “New game plan: don’t die. It’s a classic for a reason. Sound good, Hera?”

“I don’t know, Captain, Eiffel’s had me compiling a list of potential end credits songs for quite a while and I think I’ve got a pretty good set going…”

“Thank God _someone’s_ looking out for what’s important,” she says dryly, then heaves herself back towards the cargo bay. “Alright, kids, let’s go. Time for me to meet my maker.”


	2. bonus drabble: on the way back to the cargo bay

Silence. Handhold, foothold, push off from this wall, twist through this door. Soft metallic sounds of navigating through a space station.

"What does that make me?" Lovelace says suddenly. Her tone is offhand, though, normal. The same voice she uses when she's making a joke he hasn't gotten yet.

"Huh?" Eiffel says.

"Blah blah Original Recipe Lovelace could've kicked my ass too blah," she quotes. "So what am _I_ , then? Cool Ranch Lovelace?"

"Hm." A pause while he pretends to seriously consider this incredibly serious subject. "Nacho Cheese Lovelace, I bet."

A snort. "Honey Barbecue Lovelace."

"Sour Cream & Onion Lovelace!"

"No, no, wait, I got it. The real one." She's barely holding back laughter. "Salt & Vinegar Lovelace."

"The _actual_ real one." A wink and double finger guns. "Flamin' Hot Lovelace."

She grins and plants her feet on his chest to kick herself down a corridor. "Does that count as sexually harassing a superior officer? On the one hand I was technically never in the Air Force after all, but on the other hand Kepler _did_ make me Master at Arms..."

"Ow! I promise, Captain, I meant it in the most respectful and subordinate way possible and also now I'm really hungry. Goddammit."

"You're an asshole. I've successfully gone like three whole months without thinking about potato chips. Now what am I supposed to do."

A long pause, and then Hera says, "I... have no idea what any of that meant."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all lovelaces are salt and vinegar lovelaces


End file.
